House Caucus ignores the Constitution

The 92-member House Immigration Reform Caucus, headed by Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), wants to attach an amendment revoking birthright citizenship to a broader immigration bill scheduled to be taken up sometime next week. Although several revocation bills have been introduced in the House, the most likely one to move forward would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who are not citizens or permanent resident aliens.

Now, for your reference, read this:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

I repeat for emphasis: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States."

This quote is completely opposite to the Caucus's proposal. So, where does it come from? THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION, Amendment XIV, Section 1.

That's right. The House Immigration Reform Caucus is introducing legislation which is completely and patently unconstitutional. Oh, and they know about it, too. Their answer:

Conservatives maintain that although illegal immigrants are subject to criminal prosecution and are expected to abide by U.S. laws and regulations, they are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States in the full sense intended by the amendment's authors — and their children therefore fall outside the scope of its protection.

I am completely unable to comprehend this statement. What does jurisdiction mean, if not "expected to abide by U.S. laws and regulations"? There is no other meaning!

Seriously, I am completely unable to defend the Caucus's position. I've thought about it for two days, and I just cannot formulate an argument to justify "they are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States in the full sense intended by the amendment's authors." Please help!

Oh, and an extra bit of fun. When I first read this story, I said "I bet Jim Ryun's part of that group." And you know what -- I was right.

Interview!

Friday, December 02, 2005

Boycott Sony!

Why, you might ask?

Because they sold CDs which purposely installed some of the most destructive software onto people's computers, failed to tell anyone about it, and then, when they finally got called on it, released an "uninstaller" that made it worse.

Sony put copy-protection software called XCP onto many of their audio CDs. When someone put the CD into their computer, it automatically installed the XCP software, which prevented your computer from copying the files. However, in order for XCP to have the ability to do this, it also installed a "rootkit," which is a piece of software that enables other software to have full access to a computer.

Sound like something a hacker might use? It should -- hackers developed it.

Sony finally got caught. On Halloween of this year, it was revealed that this software existed. Sony originally denied the story, then made it seem like a rootkit is not that big a deal. Eventually, they put out an "uninstaller" that removed the XCP software, but not the rootkit. In fact, the uninstaller made the problem worse. When a person went to the uninstall website, the website asked the person for permission to alter the computer to remove the software. However, when it was done, it left that hole wide open, so that any website could take any action it wanted on the user's computer.

Sony has since stopped selling those CDs, and is offering to exchange people's XCP CDs for regular ones. (By the way, XCP CDs were never clearly marked, so it is difficult to figure out which CDs have it and which ones don't.) But this is not enough.